


Cabur

by CT_1205



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Beta We Die Like Clones, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29619105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CT_1205/pseuds/CT_1205
Summary: Despite preparing himself for warped limbs and a near featureless face, Jesse knew immediately that it could have been no one other than Kix. Although, Jesse could have recognized him by mere intuition alone at that point in their lives. There was nowhere Kix could go where Jesse wouldn’t know him.
Relationships: CT-5597 | Jesse/CT-6116 | Kix
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36
Collections: Clone Haven Ship of the Month





	Cabur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abunchoftookas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abunchoftookas/gifts).



> Hello! Thank you so much for picking my little story!
> 
> This was written as a gift for the absolutely incredible abunchoftookas. She is so amazing and talented and she supports me through so much. Please, please, take the time to go check out her incredible writing because I love her and her stuff so much. 
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are extremely appreciated!!

Jesse could not wait to see the inside of his refresher. He was caked in thick mud from the crown of his helmet to the toes of his boots, and little rivulets of water dribbled down the plastoid encasing his arms to drip from the fingers of his gloves. His feet stuck to the durasteel of the Resolute’s floor as he made his way from his transport ship to his quarters, leaving globs of the slurry in a trail behind him. The other members of his squad weren’t fairing much better, their shoulders slumping as they slogged through the halls towards the barracks. Even Hardcase had lost the excited spark he carried with him everywhere in the mud puddles in which they had been forced to battle.

The campaign itself hadn’t been terribly difficult. They had taken the major outpost on the planet in a matter of days. The last push towards the complex they were capturing though was met with torrential amounts of rain. It blurred the visors of their helmets and kicked up the loose dirt left by overproduction until they were swimming in a sea of congealed silt and old plant roots. Troopers slipped in the mess of it all, their boots unable to find any traction. Truthfully, it didn’t make all that much of a difference, as the thin limbs of the battle droids sank and adhered to the ground, effectively making them some of the easiest adversaries the 501st had ever faced.

With the Separatist base under Republic control, the battalion was able to load onto their gunships and make their way back up to their ship waiting in the atmosphere. Jesse had never been more grateful to see that ship in his short life.

Reaching the residential wing, Hardcase bumped his shoulder into Jesse’s and Jesse pushed back at his brother affectionately as he broke off from the group making their way towards the showers in general berthing. He turned down the opposite hall towards the officers’ quarters and dragged his feet until he reached the door to his bunk room.

The room was dark when the door slid open, having been untouched since he and Kix had left it a few days before. Jesse hadn’t expected Kix to be there yet. No matter the campaign, Kix likely wouldn’t return to their room and settle into his side of their bed until hours after Jesse had fallen asleep for the night cycle. There were always more troopers to attend to and, as far as Kix was concerned, his work would never be done. At best he would be back in their bed a few hours after Jesse turned in for the night. At worst, Jesse would find him in the medbay the next morning and drag him back to their bunk room for at least a few hours of well deserved rest under the mountain of blankets they had accumulated over the years.

Before passing the threshold, Jesse froze, knowing better than to step foot on the little woven rug at the entrance to their room. Kix had recently bought it for a few credits it in a market on some Outer Rim world and mud wouldn’t easily lift from the bright red and orange rows of knotted fabric. Jesse carefully pulled off his boots in the hallway before slipping the stirrups of his blacks over his heels and stripping the socks from his feet. He gathered it all up and made his way to the private ‘fresher attached to their room.

Jesse climbed in the shower fully clothed, even going as far to bring his boots in with him. The water was freezing when he first turned it on. The icy fingers seeped into his skin through his armor and blacks as he waited for the warmth to come. His took his armor off in pieces and was sure to scrub each individual section thoroughly before dropping it to the waiting towel on the floor just outside the stall.

There was little he could do for his blacks other than rinse them under the stream and leave them sitting in the corner while he scrubbed himself until he started to feel human again.

When he was satisfied he would pass Kix’s inspection whenever he saw him again, Jesse wrapped a towel firmly around his hips and dug through his drawers for his soft civilian clothes. Finally, blessedly clean and warm and comfortable again, he fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, too tired from the fall of adrenaline to even locate his datapad for something to entertain himself with.

Jesse didn’t sit in solitude for long. He had only enjoyed the security of his bed for a few short moments when there was a a sudden banging on his door. Sighing, he pulled himself up to hit the door release. Fives, still fully armored and somehow significantly less muddy than any other trooper Jesse had seen, was waiting on the other side.

“What do you need, _vod_?” Jesse asked, leaning into the doorframe.

Fives reached up and pulled off his helmet and tucked it under his arm. “Jesse,” he said, and Jesse pulled himself to stand straighter at the strain in his voice. “It’s Kix.”

***

When Jesse reached the medbay, he slipped through the doors before they even really opened and rushed across the expansive room to the closest medic he could find, Fives still close at his heels. Jesse stumbled over his own feet in his haste and Fives reached out to steady him with both hands on his shoulders. The young medic barely glanced up from the datapad he held in his hands before he gestured with a tilt of his head for them to follow him through the back door and into halls beyond the triage bay. He didn’t need to ask why they were there. Everyone in the medbay knew who Jesse was, and they cast their gazes down when he passed them, unable to face the blind fear in his eyes.

They passed all of the exam rooms and all of the recovery rooms and even the intensive care unit and yet they kept walking. Jesse’s steps faltered before each door as they moved by them, hoping each one would slide open to reveal his _riduur_ laying still, but very much okay in a tangle of sheets and wires.

Of course, they didn’t stop in any of those places, and instead turned down a hallway Jesse had never been in before, and halted their march at a door about halfway down.

“Lieutenant?” The medic questioned, standing before them at the door.

When Jesse didn’t respond, Fives waved the medic away. “Jesse,” he called once they were alone.

“Hmm?” Jesse hummed in reply, staring unseeingly at the monotonous grey wall in front of him. 

He realized then that he wasn’t wearing any shoes. It could have been funny, and oddly enough he had the urge to laugh hysterically at the feeling of the cold floor against the soles of his feet. He thought he must have been a sight to see, tearing through the halls of the Resolute in sweatpants and a GAR shirt with a hole in the seem that flashed glimpses of his underarm when he moved. Except, every time that inappropriate giggle found its way into the back of his throat, he swallowed as hard as he could to force it away again.

“Come on, _vod._ Let’s go see him,” Fives whispered, gently nudging Jesse out of the way to hit the door release on the wall.

The door slid open and the room beyond it was dark and bare. Fives led Jesse inside with a hand on the small of his back. The room was longer than it looked from the outside, stretching wide and shallow. In it, there were five cylindrical tanks lined up in a row down the length. The first four sat dark and empty, but the one at the far end glowed yellow and warm. There were machines surrounding it, letting out steady streams of evenly spaced beeps accompanied by the faint gurgle from the fluid circulating in the tank itself.

Jesse stalled the moment his bare feet crossed the threshold into the eerily still room, the adrenaline seeping from his system and leaving him heavy where he stood. Fives didn’t allow him the break for long and nudged him further in and down until they were standing in front of the only occupied tank.

Bacta was a strange substance. With it’s sticky, gelatinous texture and nauseatingly sweet scent, it was a very unpleasant thing to be around. Jesse had long since grown used to the pervasive scent of pineapple clinging to Kix’s skin at the end of each day, but he had never really resented it until that very moment.

No matter who was in a bacta tank, they always looked more frail floating there. Although it was clear for the most part, inhabitants seemed to develop a jaundiced look to their skin that wasn’t there when they were healthy, and the substance was thick and distorted their proportions. It often took even the most practiced eyes long moments of concentration to recognize their loved one at all.

Or at least, that’s what Jesse had always heard. He thought, somewhere in the back of his mind, that when he saw Kix floating motionless in the tank, he wouldn’t recognize his _riduur_. During his run to the medbay, something screamed at him that it wouldn’t actually be Kix, or it wouldn’t look like Kix. The thought that Kix could be distorted beyond Jesse’s own recognition chilled him to the bone and made his arms prick with pins and needles all the way down to his fingertips.

That was far from the case though. If it hadn’t been for the anxiety in his chest and Fives’s steadying grip on his arms, Jesse could have almost convinced himself that there was nothing wrong at all. Despite preparing himself for warped limbs and a near featureless face, Jesse knew immediately that it could have been no one other than Kix. Although, Jesse could have recognized him by mere intuition alone at that point in their lives. There was nowhere Kix could go where Jesse wouldn’t know _him_.

He stood away from the tank at first, putting distance between himself and the thick, roping trails of medical wires lining the floor. But, the longer he stared at Kix’s unmoving form, the more drawn in he was until he shrugged out of Fives’s hold entirely and walked forward to rest his palm flat against the tank.

Kix was undressed all the way down to his black undershorts, and there was a belt of weights strapped to his hips. He was held in a harness around his shoulders and he wore a life support mask that completely covered the lower half of his face and led up and out of the bacta. The most jarring parts though, were the wounds running down the left side of his body. They started in the middle of his chest and spread down to wrap under his his left pectoral and around the side of his ribcage, and they were all held together with more stitches than Jesse had the will to count. One thick, jagged line branched off in different directions to form the facsimile of a tree scarred into his flesh.

“Wh-what happened?” Jesse croaked out eventually.

Fives kept his distance to give Jesse as much privacy as he could afford. His back was pressed to the wall of the room and he watched Jesse as he carefully dragged his hands across the cool transparisteel, but he leaned forward with the heavy breath he pulled in at the question. “They don’t know exactly. Early yesterday morning when the siege first began, a comm came through the priority channel that the CMO was down. He was on the first medevac that left the ground,” Fives explained.

“Yesterday,” Jesse gasped out.

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you, _vod._ I know he’s your _riduur,_ but it wouldn’t have made a difference to command. Rex and I had to make a decision and we couldn’t lose you down there.”

Jesse knew well enough and while his chest burned with anger and frustration, he also knew Fives had very little to do with it all.

When he didn’t receive a response, Fives continued. “What we know for sure is that he was hit by some sort of projectile and it shattered his cuirass on impact. Most of those wounds are from where the plastoid crushed inward. It broke six ribs on his left side and one of them punctured his lung. They managed to inflate it but they had to surgically repair his ribcage. He also had fluid gather around his heart that had to be drained to remove the pressure.”

Jesse nodded his head up and down absently, although most of what Fives had said went in one ear, swirled around aimlessly, and fell back out through the other. “And now?” He asked.

“Before we leave I’ll make sure you can talk to a medic. Helix from the 212th did the surgery so he should still be here. From what they’ve told me, he’ll stay in the tank for a few more days and probably spend another week or so in recovery. All in all, he'll be okay, Jesse.”

“Okay,” Jesse whispered. Distantly, he was aware Fives was still speaking behind him but he didn’t much care to listen any further. Alive was enough.

Jesse leaned his head forward to rest against the cool transparisteel of the tank and he breathed.

***

Kix had been in the medbay for two weeks by the time he was allowed to return to his own room again. Every day during that time, Jesse would rise from their bed and do his best not too look at the cold side where the sheets hadn’t been disturbed. Fives and Hardcase did what they could to cover his shifts, so Jesse slipped into comfortable civilian clothes each morning and made his way to get breakfast from the mess hall. He would take his meal to go though, walking it all the way to sit by Kix’s side in his recovery room. On the morning Kix was able to leave, Jesse woke up to a message on his comm to come get him, and he skipped breakfast entirely. He pulled on his shoes as quickly as he could, the legs of his sleep pants gathering awkwardly around the ankle, then rushed through the Resolute towards the medbay. Like the time before, he received some peculiar looks, but Jesse didn’t mind either way. There was a goofy smile plastered to his face and he felt lighter than he had in years.

While elated to finally be allowed to leave the confines of his little recovery room, Kix was as difficult as could be expected. When Jesse arrived, he was laying in bed arguing with Coric about the necessity of a hoverchair. Kix, ever invincible as he liked to pretend to be, believed it was a frivolous use of resources. Coric had seemingly already given up and was leaning into the back of the chair heavily in defeat.

The color had returned to Kix’s cheeks and his eyes glinted stubbornly and Jesse had never been more in love with him than he was in that moment because he was alive and headstrong and every inch _Jesse’s Kix_. Naturally, Jesse indulged his demands, hooking an arm around his waist and helping him stand from the bed. Once steady on his feet, Kix shook off the hold and took a single step, then another before his legs began to shake and his face paled and Jesse stepped in behind him to take as much of his weight as he could to keep him from collapsing to the floor from the exertion. After that, Kix didn’t much mind the hoverchair.

Thankfully, most of the troopers they passed on the way to officers’ quarters were more concerned with their own days and interests than Kix. Those that did stop did so kindly to wish him a good morning and a speedy recovery. By the time they reached their room, Kix had relaxed down into the chair and had grasped at Jesse’s hand when their knuckles brushed together.

“Welcome home, _cyare_ ,” Jesse said when the door to their room slid open.

“About time,” Kix responded, easy smile gracing his lips as he took in the warm blankets and overstuffed pillows on their bed he had collected from different planets in the Outer Rim.

Jesse helped Kix maneuver through the doorway and settle as close to the side of the bed as possible, before boosting him out of the seat. He stripped Kix’s scrub top off as gently as he could and tossed it away to the corner of the room to be dealt with later, then knelt down in front of Kix and allowed his _riduur_ to use his shoulders to steady himself as he pulled the matching pants down his legs. The light blue set was the best they could supply Kix with in the medbay after emerging from the bacta tank, and he was grateful to be rid of them. The feel of the scrubs he already wore on a daily basis helped convince him, even just a little, that his residency there would be short lived, but they had no place in the little room he shared with Jesse. Jesse changed him into worn civilian clothes and then helped him lean back into their bed, arranging the pillows to support Kix’s left side.

The bacta had worked wonders on his wounds and the stitches had long since been removed, but the scars remained in a patchwork pattern up and down the side of his body and they ached deep into his core in a way Kix had never experienced before. Jesse being allowed to dote on him with so few complaints was testament enough to the soul deep exhaustion Kix felt.

Once settled, Kix sank back and breathed as deep as he could without disturbing the metal plating holding his ribs together. Jesse silently handed him his pain medicine and a canteen of water, both of which Kix took willingly. Finally, Jesse kicked his shoes off and dropped down onto his side of the bed.

He stared at the ceiling in silence for a moment before sitting up more fully and turning to face Kix.

“Hi,” Jesse whispered, running his finger tips across Kix’s upturned palm.

“Hi,” Kix responded, turning his head to make eye contact with Jesse and tangling their hands together.

With his free hand, Jesse reached forward and ran his thumb down the side of Kix’s face and over his plump lips. They were miserably chapped from the dry air of the medbay, and Jesse made a mental note to retrieve the tube of balm from Kix’s bag across the room when he got up again.

“I know you want to ask,” Kix said eventually, lips catching at the edge of Jesse’s thumb as he spoke.

Jesse hummed noncommittally as he slid his hand down further so the palm of it rested against Kix’s collar bone and he could feel each breath that passed through his lungs. “Will it make any difference now?”

Kix’s eyes slipped shut then and his breath stuttered with pain when he forced his lungs too far. “There was a shiny, hadn’t even earned his paint yet. He was on my gunship and he stuck pretty close the entire time we were down there. I think we were really some of the only other _vode_ he had really gotten to know at that point. He played it safe for the most part, but he slipped and his boot sank into the mud and got stuck. I still don’t know what on. One of the seppie tanks had exploded, hit with one of our missiles I think. The kid was right in the line of fire and I couldn’t watch him die, so I tackled him. I didn’t feel it when it hit. I woke up a week later to you and Coric at my bedside. Broke the kid’s leg when I took him down apparently.”

“Little gods, Kix,” Jesse gasped out.

When Kix’s eyes popped open again, they were misted with tears that he blinked away. “He’s only 8, Jess. I could stop it, so I did.”

Jesse collapsed further into the bed and fitted himself against Kix’s side, squishing their hands between them. “You’re here now,” he whispered into his ear, “and that’s all I can ask for.”

“You’re not going to lose me, _cyare_ ,” Kix said, and although he new he shouldn’t promise such things, he believed it deep in his chest.

“Hmm,” Jesse replied, his breath brushing across Kix’s clavicle. “I don’t know what would happen to me if I did. You better not go anywhere, Kix. I have plans for us.”

“Oh?” Kix asked, angling his head down to look at Jesse.

“Yeah,” he said. “This war has to end eventually and I plan on both of us getting to the end of it. I don’t know what the Senate has in mind for us, if they’ve even thought of something that is. But no matter what they say, you and I are gonna go see the peaceful parts of the galaxy. Find a ship that needs some love. Fix it up and make it home with all your blankets and rugs and whatever else you want to add to it to soften it up some.”

“Maybe we could get some tapestries,” Kix added. “I’ve never cared for durasteel walls.”

Jesse huffed a laugh and it tickled as it brushed over Kix’s skin, raising goose flesh in its wake. “Yeah, we’ll add some tapestries. You know I’ve never much minded as long as you’re happy with it. As long as you’re with me in that bucket of bolts I’ll be a happy man.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead honestly,” Jesse responded. “Probably all of the usual places like Chandrila and Alderaan and Naboo. Maybe head out to Pantora to enjoy the snow for once rather than trudge through it. Takodana might be fun. See if we can fit in with the smugglers and pirates out there. I might have to wear a hat or scarf to cover the tat, but you’ve got that rugged look going on that could pass there.” Jesse winked although he wasn’t sure Kix could see him.

Kix chuckled and squeezed Jesse’s hand twice. “I’d like to see Scarif, I think. I’ve only ever seen holos, but I’d like to lay in the sand for a couple weeks without worrying about getting enough traction to run across it.”

“Yeah. We’ll go to Scarif then.”

“And what about once we’ve seen everything we want to see?” Kix asked.

“Then we pick our favorite, or maybe go find our _aliit_ and a home without a hyperdrive for once. Before we settle down though, I’d like to go back to Kamino.”

“Kamino?” Kix’s lips pulled back in a sneer around the word.

Jesse laughed at the disgust in his voice. “Just long enough to pick up a couple of the little ones to spoil. Say the g _ai bal manda_ and raise them in a world without blaster fire.”

“I would like that,” Kix rasped.

“I thought you might.”

Without anymore to say, they basked in the warmth of the dream. Jesse traced little patterns across Kix’s stomach and Kix tried to figure out the letters he knew Jesse was tracing. In the galaxy in which they lived, it seemed impractical at times to ever hope for more than those moments of fleeting peace, but they could almost feel the sea spray from Scarif’s oceans on their faces, and they believed in their future together with a conviction that roused them from their bed each morning.

“Jesse,” Kix said eventually.

“Yes, _cyar’ika._ ”

“I have to pee.”

Jesse’s whole body shook with his laughter as he pushed himself into a sitting position and moved to stand in front of Kix again.

With his hands slipped behind Kix’s back, Jesse pulled him up and allowed him to catch his breath. He wrapped his arms around Jesse’s waist when he was ready to move to his feet, and Jesse grasped both of his upper arms.

“ _Tome?_ ” Jesse asked.

“ _Tome._ ”

With Kix standing eye to eye with Jesse, they both knew they would be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> Mando’a Translations:
> 
> cabur- guardian, protector  
> vod- brother, comrade, “mate”  
> riduur- partner, spouse, husband, wife  
> cyare- beloved  
> aliit- clan, family  
> gai bal manda- adoption vow (lit. name and soul)  
> cyar’ika- darling, sweetheart  
> tome- together


End file.
